In the End
by Ice Queen1
Summary: Don't go where I can't follow Dean's reaction to Sam's desire to go back to normal life in Shadow


Author's Note: Oh, how I love the Winchester boys. They're so much fun to tinker with. Obviously not mine, just borrowed for a bit. This is unbetaed, and I was a very bad girl and decided not to recheck it when I was finished. All errors are mine (though pointing them out is still helpful, along with any other criticism.) Also, I realize I put in the comment that Sam went off to law school, but he hadn't, did he? He was going to go there when Dean got him. So where was he?

Dean could feel his heart jump when those words left his brother's mouth:

_But I don't want them to be._

How could Sam not want things back to normal? Back to the way they knew, life on the road with the only family they had left.

Dean would be the first to admit, he had abandonment issues. Every one that was ever close to him left him. His mother died when he was four, leaving him to raise his baby brother out of a truck and cheap motels across the country like a bunch of fugitives. His father who he idolized went out on a hunt one day and didn't come back, wouldn't answer phone calls, and ignored every pleading message Dean had left on his cell demanding to know where he was and why he didn't return.

And there was his brother. Samuel Winchester. Dean at one point in his blind rage against his brother decided that if Sam had been a dog, he would've had him euthanized for turning on him. That doesn't mean that Dean thought of Sam as a dog, because that would've implied there was a difference in their 'rank', or that Sam would be in some slight degree obedient.

Sam hated their life. Hated living off of stolen credits cards and hustled pool money. Hated having to go to school in random bursts that could last anywhere from a week to eight months in one place before having to move on. He hated not having any real friends, or a chance to try out a sport, and he hated never truly knowing either of his parents.

If Sam were going to be guilty of a sin, it would be envy.

Sam saw everything that everyone else had and he didn't. They had a house…a real house, not a trailer, or a motel, but a house to call their own. They had parents with normal jobs, they had brothers, sisters, family dog and little white picket fence. And he saw that they were happy.

Dean guessed that somewhere along those lines was where his brother decided that he was going to have a life like that, and that was the true source of happiness. Normalcy. His family wasn't normal, and therefore wasn't happy.

Dean almost wanted to beat Sam into the ground when he found out he was going to college, leaving him and his dad. He knew John loved both his sons equally, but he also knew that their father was well aware of his shortcomings. When Sam needed a parent the most, John was in no condition to be of any help. Losing a beloved spouse that you swore to spend the rest of your life with under normal circumstances, like disease or an accident, but when you heard your wife's bloodcurdling scream and found her plastered to the ceiling with a gaping slash across her stomach before bursting into flames kinda fucks with your grieving process.

For the first couple of months after the accident, John would do little besides sit in his chair at his mother's house, staring into nothingness. Dean had always wondered as a child if perhaps his father had died with his mother and God just forgot to take his soul. But after those first few months John began researching. He would be gone for days, leaving his boys at their grandmother's while he hunted down obscure texts and spoke to people about their close encounters with things of the supernatural persuasion.

And that was the start of John Winchester: Monster Hunter Extraordinaire. Dean knew Sam also thought that was the death of John Winchester as a dad, but Dean knew better. If their father didn't love them, he would've left them there, with his aging mother who took more naps than Sammy and wouldn't have looked back. He took his sons with him, included them in everything he did. He taught them how to survive against anything and everything that might come after them, from bullies on the playground, to pissed off bikers who were mad a kid half their age beat them in pool to poltergeists and demons. They saw more of their father than half the kids their age. Sure, most of it was spent hunting, or on the road living off what little money they could gather, but if they'd been in one place for a while, long enough for John to have a job and earn some honest cash, there were good, normal days too. Baseball or basketball games, dinner someplace besides a convenience store or pizza, or on the very rare occasion that they were somewhere in the country, they would go hiking as a family.

And that was the Winchester Normal for years.

Right up until his bastard brother decided he was too good for that and went to law school.

And what stung the most was that Sam would rather return to that than to his own family, as twisted as it may be. He wanted everyone else's normal life, the rest of his family be damned. When Sam went to school he didn't call, he didn't write, not even an e-mail. He wanted nothing to do with his former life, which included his brother and his father.

Now, not wanting to talk to their dad Dean understood. They had the blowout of all blowouts when Sam informed them he was leaving and there was nothing short of bolting him to the floor that they could do to stop him. But Dean often wondered what the hell he did that was so wrong that his brother refused to speak to him. When his dad went to swing by the college to check on his brother, he would ask Dean every time if he wanted to go. And every time the answer was the same: no.

Because Sam had gone the one place Dean couldn't follow.

He and his girlfriend, Jess, as his dad found out, would wind up getting married; he'd be a lawyer and have a bunch of kids and his little white picket fence. And he'd be normal, just like he always wanted.

As much as he hated to admit it, Dean would do anything for his brother. Even if it meant staying away. However, things changed when John disappeared. Dean had to go find his brother to help search for their dad. He was willing to let Sam go back to his life, but not if it meant Dean had to spend the rest of his alone. In a twisted, fucked up way, he was glad when Jess died. It gave Sam a little perspective on what his brother and father felt when they remember Mary, and it fed his Winchester thirst for revenge, which meant he would stay with Dean for as long as it took to find the demon that killed Jess and Mary.

For a while, things were back to a relative normal, and Dean thought that they would stay that way. After all, Sam lost his chance at a normal life when Jess died just like Dean lost his chance when his mother died. Or so he had thought.

But now he knew it for what it really was. A sham, a fake, a fraud…a lie. His brother had every intention of leaving him again once they found and killed the demon responsible for ruining their happy lives. Sam would go back to be a lawyer, find another girl, and settle down in a suburban fantasy world, safe from everything supernatural with his back to the darkness that his brother and father belonged to and embraced.

Sam would have his perfect normal life, and he would be as unreachable to his family as if he had moved to another planet. And Dean hated him for it.

_Don't go where I can't follow Sam_.


End file.
